The UEFA Euro 2016 championship game between Portugal and France pushed futbol's popularity among the streaming crowd to record heights once again, with CDN provider Akamai recording peak traffic rate of 7.3 terabits per second, along with 3.3 million concurrent streams, during the match's overtime period.
The average video bitrate, Akamai noted in a breakdown of streaming benchmarks during the tournament, was 2.18 Mbps.
The traffic record, not surprisingly, is significantly higher than peak traffic rates during the World Cup two years ago -- though the Argentina-Netherlands semifinal match during that tournament saw a peak rate of 7.0 Tbps. But more importantly, it sets the stage for the type of streaming traffic networks may see in early August when the Summer Games get underway in Rio.
"Streaming online events of this magnitude with the expected viewing quality requires broadcasters to start preparations months in advance," said Akamai's Chris Nicholson in a blog post detailing traffic highlights during the Euro tournament.
Other Euro matches didn't see quite the same level of traffic: the second-highest traffic was measured during the Germany-Italy match, reaching 6 Tbps and 2.7 million concurrent streams, followed by Germany-France at 5.9 Tbps, England-Iceland at 5.3 Tbps, and Italy-Spain, also at 5.3 Tbps.
Akamai works with rights-holding broadcasters to live-stream sports coverage like the Euro Championship; in this case the CDN provider was able to get insights into the streams of more than 35 broadcasters worldwide delivered via its network.
For more:
- see this blog post
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